: Re: Can I be a good writer without reading a lot? This may seem like blasphemy to a lot of you, but can I become a good writer without doing incredible amounts of reading? I never read for

@Correia211

Vote Up Vote Down

I have contemplated a question similar to this which is:
Can a person read "how to write" books and learn to write?
I believe you can, if you read the right books.
Now, what I believe you are actually asking is: Are there any shortcuts to learning to write well? You also seem to be asking this in light of the fact that you seem to also understand that learning to write well does require a lot of reading so you can see examples of good and bad writing.

Read Numerous Passages From Many Books

Well, I contemplated the same thing and discovered that if you read the right passages from a large number of books you can gain a lot of insight quickly. But who has compiled a large list of passages and provided commentary on the good and bad of those examples? Okay, well, here goes some gratuitous self promotion: My book, Fiction Writing Gems is available on amazon and provides exactly this from a large number of published books.

Survey Many Books

What it means is that you can read passages which are only around 250 - 300 words from published books and then learn why the passage was good or bad. You can then apply that learning to your own writing.

Library Staycation

I learned this while doing my own survey of 100 fiction novels at the local library. Have you ever read the first page of 100 novels in one sitting? It is both fascinating and nauseating. :)
You can read my blog about that at: To Write Great, Get Jaded

I hope I've provided some new ideas for you.

(0)

Login to post a comment!